Parenting a Teenager with Mental Illness: A Letter from a 17-Year-Old
When parenting a teenager with mental illness, you’re not only supporting your child through the heightened emotions and social pressures of adolescents. You’re also faced with the challenge of helping your teenager identify the resources and support they need to manage their mental health.
Seventeen-year-old Charlotte Witvoet has spent much of her life struggling with mental illness and now as a writer and mental health advocate, she is committed to sharing her coping skills and story with other young adults. Below she shares three reminders to parents of teenagers who may be facing similar mental health challenges.
You can hear more from Charlotte in our Supporting Teen Mental Health During COVID-19 webinar and podcast, where she served as moderator for our conversation with guest experts Dr. Elizabeth Cauffman, Dr. Christopher Drapeau, and Laura Sanders Morris.
Life with a teenager with mental illness is hard. I will be the first to admit that.
As a 17-year-old, who was first suicidal at the age of 11, most of my life has been lived in crisis mode for me and my entire family. The road to recovery has not been an easy path (I’m still on it!), but there are definitely things my parents and I have learned along the way that have helped us work through it as a team.
Reflecting on my own experiences and the experiences my peers have shared, here are three things I think every parent should keep in mind when helping their child get to the road of recovery.
1. Your mentally ill teenager is more than their diagnosis.
As someone who struggles with mental illness, sometimes it’s hard to remember this and put it into practice. “The classes I’m failing are because my ADHD makes it too hard to focus. I don’t have friends my age because I’m too anxious to talk to my peers.” And so on and so on and so on.
But you have to remember that your mentally ill teenager is also going through their normal-life teenager stages right now. High school is hard, and we’re all just starting to figure out who we are and who we want to be. And while mental illness tends to exacerbate all these things, it doesn’t mean your child is dysfunctional or won’t be successful out in the ‘real world.’
At the end of the day, breakups or bullying, or whatever else are hard for anyone. It doesn’t mean your kid is destined for failure and won’t conquer their challenges.
2. Your mentally ill teenager has the same needs and desires as anyone else their age.
It’s easy to feel like your child needs to be protected because they have mental illness. Or to feel like somehow, they need ‘special help’ to be functional and successful. And while, yes, it’s important that you both work together and advocate for their needs, your teenager still wants the same things as everyone else.
If they’re failing all their classes, it’s not because they don’t want to be successful. If they can’t pick up the phone to order a pizza, it’s not because they don’t want to. And most importantly, teenagers want autonomy and independence.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when I have a therapist or psychiatrist appointment and a family member jumps in first to say how I’ve been doing, what’s been going on, and how they feel about things. Or when I ask to go out at 10 p.m. on a Friday night, and I’m confronted with the question, “Is that really the best idea?” because my anxiety has been through the roof all week.
Sure, sometimes I’m going to fumble weirdly over my words, or go out and realize it was a mistake, or make friends that support all of my unhealthy behaviors, but it’s important for me to make my own mistakes.
I don’t need to be protected more than any other teen. Give me your opinions and input on my toxic relationships, how to approach an issue with my therapist, or how to get my grades up, but at the end of the day, at some point, you have to let me make my own mistakes.
I need to learn to be in charge of my own decisions, even when I screw it up. Isn’t that how teenagers learn?
3. You can’t fix your child.
This is maybe the hardest one to learn and accept when all you want to do is help your teen be happy. But the truth is, teenagers don’t like to listen.
Give them resources, patience, and all of the support you would want from someone you love.
From my own experience, when I was taken to doctor after doctor and I was still depressed, anxious, and suicidal, I started to feel like something was wrong with me. Like I was broken and no one could figure out how to fix it. It took me years to realize that I was the one who had to put work into my healing.
Truthfully, I had to hit my own rock bottom to recover. I’m not saying let your teenager do whatever they want until they figure it out, but if you’re doing all the right things and it doesn’t seem like life is getting out of crisis mode, it’s not personal. You’re still a wonderful parent, and it’s okay to let go and accept that they’ll have to choose happiness for themselves.
Parenting is hard work, and nobody gets it quite right all of the time. Learning to be an adult and navigating through the teenage years is hard, too. And, of course, we don’t get it quite right all of the time.
But, your child will figure it out, and you will too. Give each other the benefit of the doubt and kindness, but also give each other the room to make mistakes and learn to do better.
Meet Charlotte Witvoet
Charlotte Witvoet is a seventeen-year-old who has struggled her whole life with mental illness. After years of mental hospitals and therapy, she is on a road to recovery and wants to share her coping skills and story with other young adults.
In 2019, she started her own part-time Etsy business and, in 2020, she published a young adult novel diving into the struggle of mental illness, Paint my Body Red.
During this pandemic, Charlotte has filled her time and attempted to stay mentally healthy by spending extra time with her dog, making TikToks, and dressing up to go to the grocery store. She continues to be an advocate for mental health, LGBTQ+ equality, and sexual assault survivors.